UCaaS and SD-WAN: Individually Powerful, Together Unstoppable

by Austin Herrington

September 21, 2017

Windstream SD-WAN and Broadview OfficeSuite: a match made in the clouds
Self-styled “foodies” will tell you it’s the perfect pairing of food and wine (or for some, a great craft beer) that’s the essence of a great meal. As experts on technology consumption, we share a similar philosophy. A single great offering can be terrific; but paired with the right partner, the experience can be transformational.

So what’s the technology equivalent of artisanal California goat cheese with Schramsberg Blanc de Noirs? We actually just created it with the acquisition of Broadview Networks by Windstream. Bringing together two of the hottest offerings in enterprise tech – Cloud-based unified communications (UC) and SD-WAN – under a single business communication banner. It’s a match that was truly made in the clouds that has the promises to change everything.

What makes the melding of Windstream SD-WAN and OfficeSuite so special is it combines what we believe is the hands down, easiest to use and manage cloud-based UC system on the market today with its professional equivalent from the world of software defined wide area networks.

The result is an integrated business communications experience – combining voice, collaboration, screen sharing, messaging, video conferencing, presence, and more – delivered over affordable and highly available broadband IP connectivity, but with a level of performance, reliability/uptime and quality of service previously associated only with traditional, costly, private, aging “WANosaurus” style networks.

UCaaS for quality conscious organizations, like yours

While the acronyms “UC” and “UCaaS” have only recently become mainstream, the concepts behind them go back to the early days of Voice over IP. While UC technology and functionality has long since surpassed that of basic VoIP, along with once dominant premises-based legacy PBX office phone systems, there have been some otherwise progressive businesses and IT leaders who have held out from moving voice/video to the cloud due to concerns about quality and reliability. And for whom the upfront savings of using low cost Internet connectivity did not outweigh the risk of potential downtime that came with making that move.

This is where the magic of OfficeSuite combined with SD-WAN comes in, since it provides enterprise level performance, resiliency and security that meets the expectation levels of even the most demanding companies. While offering all sorts of additional, ancillary benefits and advantages – like the ability to prioritize and optimize all of your cloud-based apps, in addition to OfficeSuite – in the process.

Goodbye latency and jitter, hello future of business

I’m not going to dwell on all the specific features and functions that set the solution apart – you can find out more about that on our site and supporting materials. I will add though that this new offering puts a proprietary, highly regarded, UCaaS solution under the ownership and control of a major network service provider (NSP) that owns/operates the network itself, and that is driving a similarly progressive next-gen network solution in the form of our fully-managed Windstream SD-WAN.

Together, they offer business customers of all sizes, an opportunity to get jitter free performance of essential voice and video apps – delivering on the true promise of UCaaS – and eliminate latency and questions about mission critical application delivery and reliability across all cloud based apps.

Delivering on the real meaning of digital transformation

That, culinary and technology fans, is transformative, game changing stuff with no precedent in this space that I am aware of. And that is what makes me so excited about what the future holds for our customers, and for everyone here at Windstream, including the great team that just joined with me from Broadview, among them the developers of our terrific OfficeSuite UCaaS app.

Austin Herrington

Austin Herrington is Vice President of Enterprise Voice Product Management for Windstream Enterprise. He oversees the enterprise product strategy and roadmap where he and his team develop, manage and market advanced products and services offered to customers nationwide, executing programs to help businesses achieve a perpetual state of winning. He was previously Director of Product Management responsible for Windstream’s Internet portfolio and value-added services. Prior to joining Windstream in 2006, Herrington was Director of Product Management for Alltel. He holds an MBA from the University of Arkansas’ Sam M. Walton College of Business.